vegan

If you follow me on Instagram you’ll know it’s all been a bit souptastic of late.

My husband has been making a concerted effort to eat healthier so I have been making big batches of soup and freezing it in portions for him to take to work for his lunch. I’ve tried to make lots of different flavours so he doesn’t get bored and I think this one is my favourite.

Makes 4 generous portions

Ingredients

Approx 2 tablespoons coconut oil

900g tomatoes on the vine (or thereabouts, I went to make soup today and SOMEONE had eaten 2 of my tomatoes)

8-10 large carrots peeled & chopped

3 large garlic cloves

1 small onion

Salt & pepper to taste
Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200C

Grease a large ovenproof dish with coconut oil

Remove the tomatoes from the vine, wash and cut in half. Place cut side down in the dish.

Peel and chop the onion into large chunks and place the pieces among the tomatoes.

Chop the ends off the garlic cloves but add them to the dish in their skins.

Melt a tablespoon of coconut oil in the microwave until liquid (30-60 seconds) and drizzle over the top of the tomatoes.

Roast in the centre of the oven for 40 minutes

While the tomatoes are roasting prepare the carrots and boil them in a large pot until soft.

When the tomatoes & carrots are cooked and the dish is cool enough to handle place the tomato, onion & juices into a blender and add the garlic by squeezing it out of its skin.

Blend until smooth (some bits of burnt onion/tomato skin may remain. Do not worry as the next step is to sieve the mixture into a large bowl. Use a sieve with reasonably big holes in the mesh, I bought one specially as my baking ones are quite fine and I was losing too much of my life to sieving tomatoes!

Press and stir the mixture with a spoon until all the liquid has passed through and you are left with the seeds, skins and bits of onion.

Once you have done this blend the carrots (you can add some of the cooking water to loosen them up in the blender) and then stir them into the sieved tomatoes.

Season with salt & pepper to taste. You can add more water at this point if the soup is very thick or you could stir in some dairy free milk. I divide the soup into portions to cool and then store in the fridge if they are to be eaten in the next couple of days or I freeze for easy weekday lunches.

The kids are off school Friday-Monday for the May weekend (well they have been back nearly two weeks so it was about time for a break *rolls eyes*). We’ve no grand plans as we’re all choked with the cold and it is properly freezing. Like snow freezing!! This is the view out my window last night!

After a lazy long lie in watching back to back Transformers episodes with my boy my daughter appeared and requested chocolate for breakfast. While I wasn’t up for Easter chocolate for breakfast – that’s purely something we do on Easter Sunday and how on earth does she still have chocolate?? The boy had polished his off by Easter Monday! – I was up for something chocolatey so I threw together double chocolate pancakes with chopped dates and banana. Free from gluten, milk, eggs & nuts. They were so simple and so good I thought I’d share.

Double chocolate pancakes

Makes approx 12

Ingredients

1 cup gluten free self raising flour (I used Doves Farm)

2 Tablespoons sugar

2 Tablespoons cocoa (I used Tesco’s own)

1 Tablespoon ground flaxseed

3 Tablespoons water

1 cup dairy free milk (I used Koko)

Generous squirt of lemon juice

Handful chopped dates

Handful dairy free chocolate chips (I used Plamil)

1 chopped banana

Sunflower oil for the pan

Instructions

Place the flaxseed and water in a small bowl and sit aside

Squirt some lemon juice into a cup measure then fill with dairy free milk (could use a teaspoon cider vinegar but my fridge was closer than the cupboard)